Karen Abbott Reads from Her New Book on Striptease Queen, Gypsy Rose Lee

After hearing that Gypsy Rose Lee, in one 1935 performance, took “a full 15 minutes to peel off a single glove,” journalist Karen Abbott was intrigued by the woman behind the burlesque. In her extremely entertaining and engaging new book, American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee (Random House), Abbott uncovers the private world Gypsy inhabited—inextricably bound with that of her sister, actress June Havoc, and their diabolical mother, Rose—from the dancer’s early vaudeville career to her fame as the queen of striptease. Below, Abbott recounts Gypsy’s days at a sleepover literary salon in Brooklyn with the likes of W. H. Auden, George Davies, and Salvador Dali, in 1940.